Fueling the sales engine

After six years in business, managing sales solo was no longer possible for Casey Hurd, owner of Greenscapes Land Care in Still Pond, Maryland. The business employs 18 people today, half of whom are full time. Hurd would like to change the service mix from 80 to 50 percent residential, and grow the commercial maintenance division. “We have grown by 100 percent the past two years,” Hurd says, projecting 2016 revenues of about $900,000.

This year was the time to bring on a full-time salesperson – someone besides Hurd to keep filling the backlog. But how should this person get paid? That’s a question many landscape business owners consider whether they’re hiring their first sales associate or adding to a business development team.

There are three ways to pay a salesperson, says Jim Huston, president of J.R. Huston Consulting. 

Click here to read the article in our Benchmarking Your Business report, and see what those three ways are.